Runway Selection - Uncontrolled Airspace

[Deon Mathews]

Hello Vatsim family,

 

The normal procedure I employ to select a departure or arrival runway is to check the wind direction and airport charts for the most suitable runway, I then confirm my selection on Flightradar24 and this is where things occasionally get complicated!? Case in point; did a flight into LSZH this morning and according to the Metar the wind clearly favored RWY 16 for arrival ( 200 05kt) but Flightradar24 showed RWY32 for departures and RWY34 for arrivals and with the wind relatively light I selected 34.

 

The issue arises when other traffic (as happened this morning) uses the wind favored runway, thus creating a potential conflict.

 

Your thoughts on this will be appreciated.

[Sean Harrison]

Hi Deon,

 

Welcome to most days on VATSIM. The topic has been discussed regularly on these forums, with some p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ion.

 

Selecting a runway for landing and even takeoff is viewed by almost everyone in a different way using similar criteria.

 

I don’t think we will ever get any consensus on the runway to use when ATC is off line.

 

The only saving I believe is communication; or more appropriately interaction; between pilots when no ATC is available. Sadly, many don’t appear to care about others, as you may have experienced and I did as early as yesterday. Five acft at KLAX not one made any announcement nor indicated what runway they were going to use. Over 30min of descent I made about 6 calls as I would in the real world. One acft actually flew opposing into my path whilst I was on approach.

 

So what do we do? Smile and remember no-one is going to be hurt nor killed online.

[Simon Kelsey]

As above really -- the key is communication and co-ordination so everybody gets what they want.

 

This is one of my issues with people who insist on slavishly following what the real-world airport is doing based on FR24 -- it is much more difficult to change ends at a busy real airfield than it is on VATSIM, and there are many times where the real airfield would probably be preferring to be using the other end but the switch is impractical!

 

All that said, the textual data section of the charts invariably provides all the necessary information to allow one to select the correct runway without reference to FR24 and Zurich is no exception:

 

Expect the landing runway to be [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned as follows:

Weekdays:

0600-0700LT - Rwy 34

0700-2100LT - Rwy 14

2100-0600LT - Rwy 28 (Rwy 34 may be requested if safety requires, flights to rwy 28 have priority)

Weekends & Holidays

0600-0900LT - Rwy 34

0900-2000LT - Rwy 14

2000-0600LT - Rwy 28 (Rwy 34 may be requested if safety requires, flights to rwy 28 have priority)

Other landing rwys may be [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned due to meteorological conditions or operational reasons.

 

"Meteorological conditions" generally in my experience implies a tailwind component >5 kt or so, but some airports will push that to closer to 10 kt. There are also notes in the textual data about the approaches to certain runways lying outside controlled airspace at certain times and thus the reasoning for generally avoiding landing 14 or 16 overnight.

[Andreas Fuchs]

As the previous posters have said it correctly. And: vACC Switzerland is providing this information on their website as well. It is therefore always beneficial to have a quick look at the local VATSIM-website of your airport of departure and arrival: http://www.vacc.ch/en/airports_and_charts/LSZH

 

In the end, communication is everything. If you decide to operate into the wind, but other pilots are departing/landing with tailwind, this might be a wakeup-signal for you to check for a preferential runway system or simply go with the flow.